


A Lost Life Long Gone

by Meledore



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Death, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flash Fic, Hurt No Comfort, R Plus L Equals J, Sad, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27572563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meledore/pseuds/Meledore
Summary: Daenerys Targaryen doesn't really feel anything anymore.Just a slight numbing sensation of her senses when he had first brought home the papers one day, setting them neatly onto the kitchen table for her to see. A pang of her heart when she began to realise that he was spending more and more nights out of the house. The migraine building each time he comes home, stumbling around in the dark and the pain etched so clearly in his eyes, every breath reeking of whiskey. Sometimes, sometimes he is drunk enough to try and kiss her, but he always remembers, and each step away is its own torture. So she learns to stop feeling.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow/Ygritte
Comments: 23
Kudos: 29





	A Lost Life Long Gone

**Author's Note:**

> Just as a disclaimer that I am not entirely familiar with cardiovascular issues so if I got any details wrong there that's my bad. Timeline is chronological but there is little consistency on how long there is between "entries"

Daenerys Targaryen doesn't really  _ feel  _ anything anymore. 

Just a slight numbing sensation of her senses when he had first brought home the papers one day, setting them neatly onto the kitchen table for her to see. A pang of her heart when she began to realise that he was spending more and more nights out of the house. The migraine building each time he comes home, stumbling around in the dark and the pain etched so clearly in his eyes, every breath reeking of whiskey. Sometimes, sometimes he is drunk enough to try and kiss her, but he always remembers, and each step away is its own torture. So she learns to stop feeling. 

They haven't taken to sleeping separately yet, and for that she is grateful.

It's a strange situation they've found themselves in. The love is still there, she thinks. Deep down, she knows that his heart is in her hands. And yet, the spark is gone. When they look at each other, the only thing they can see is their nightmares. The happy moments they had shared after their wedding, all the touches they had shared and each small glance that had brought them here; vanished into thin air.  _ He  _ can't look at her any more without disgust.  _ She  _ cannot look at him anymore because she is alone. 

The hardest blow is when he comes back from work with perfume infused into his shirt and a lipstick kiss on his collar. She simply points to the shower and gathers a few blankets into the spare bedroom instead. It's cold and lonely, but the alternative is worse. 

* * *

"Daenerys." 

Her name on his lips is incredibly jarring, and she quite nearly spills her cup of coffee. Something foreign flickers in her mind. How long ago did he call her Dany? She finally musters up the courage to look him in the eye. 

"Yes?" 

"I think we should talk." 

Five words that quite nearly makes her heart stop. 

"Yeah," she clears her throat before taking a seat down across from Jon, whose hands are running over the worn wood of their kitchen table, "Sure."

"I'm not being unfaithful to you, Daenerys." His voice doesn't leave room for debate. "I know it looks like it, but I'm not. Not when we're still legally married." He gestures uncomfortably to himself. "I can promise you that, at least." 

Daenerys tries not to let the tears fall, but she manages a small nod of thanks. Her stupid, Northern fool. She curses her brother, she curses the Gods neither believe in, for letting this information come to light. 

Maybe he hears her soft little cries filtering through the closed bathroom door as she curls into herself and tries not to let the pain consume her nerves, maybe he doesn't. Maybe he notices the dark circles under her eyes grow heavier each day, maybe he turns away. Maybe Jon sees the way her perfect little life has begun to fracture, maybe he relishes in it. Daenerys Targaryen is slowly going mad, and Jon Snow has left her to drown. 

* * *

"Why are we doing this?" She asks him quietly right before they enter the courtroom, her gaze lowered and her hands rubbing the silk material of her shirt. "Will this make our lives better?"

"Yes." 

"Will you be happier?"

"Will you?"

And so the conversation ends and Daenerys feels her brain slowly shut down. She likes to think he was as miserable as she was leaving the municipal building with a terrible taste in the back of her throat. She goes to the chemists and immediately buys herself a box of pregnancy tests. 

"I love you." She tells him, holding the last suitcase of her things in her hands, eyes lingering on the corners and crevices of this beautiful house she used to call home. He took the house, she took only what was hers. He was the one who had built the place, after all. She was just the interior designer. 

"Don't say that." He's at the doorway, tired frame weathered and weary, clad in those grey sweatpants that he insisted on keeping from his college days and a worn Night's Watch hoodie. He doesn't know why she's brightened up in the past few days, but he doesn't find himself caring enough to find out why. A selfish part of him relished at the quiet humming he had missed so dearly in the morning and the absent-minded smiles she always wore when her mind was elsewhere; the rational side of him told him that she truly was happier apart. 

"It is the truth." 

* * *

She doesn't find out that he's remarried until he sends her a letter one day, asks for her to attend the wedding. It's almost embarrassing how quickly the invitation gets thrown into the rubbish bin, and even more amusing at how soon she finds it back in her study, propped on the bookshelf to haunt her in her dreams forever. She politely declines, but the familiar photos of  _ their  _ moment are leafed through one more time and the frustration eventually surmounts to the entire photo album shoved underneath the bed because  _ Seven Hells  _ she is  _ not  _ allowed to drink her problems away anymore. 

* * *

Jon doesn't know why Missandei's phone number showed a dazzling eleven missed calls in the span of thirty-two hours, three of the first few leaving voicemails filled with frantic tears and a blubbering mess -an unusual state for the woman Jon had always known to be composed and clear-headed- but the last one was the cold and calculated voice of his ex-wife's friend assuring him that nothing was amiss and to please, do not call in the future for confirmation. He looked at the calendar in his office. It was almost seven months to the dot of the divorce. Strange.

* * *

He doesn't see her for another five years, when he's settled quite happily with Ygritte and the last thing on his mind is a silver-haired girl. But then his phone rings in the wee hours of the morning, forcing him out of the warmth of his bed and squinting at the unfamiliar caller ID, cursing as he shuts the bathroom door and sits on the toilet seat in the dark, trying desperately not to wake Ygritte even though he knows that she's already up. 

"Hello?" He hisses at the phone, tired and annoyed that someone is trying to reach him at two in the fucking morning. "Who is this?!"

"Is this Jon Snow?" Comes the reply, a woman's voice that sounds so clinical and professional that he tenses automatically. The last time someone's sounded like this, it was to say that his father had just passed away. His mind immediately runs through the possible scenarios, each one worse than the other. Arya was hurt. Bran had fallen, Robb was injured in the line of duty. Sansa was ill. Rickon had gone missing. Jon panicked, only to realise that the woman was still talking. 

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" 

The line went silent for a moment. 

"You've been listed as the emergency contact for Daenerys Targaryen, Mr Snow." 

He leaves the hospital with one less ex-wife and a tiny, tiny toddler asleep in his arms. Ygritte sure as hells isn't happy that they suddenly have a purple-eyed, silver-haired kid to take care off, and the idea makes his heart scream in agony when he remembers that Catelyn and Ygritte both have red hair, but he shrugs it off for now as nerves and the fact that it's four in the morning and they only have six hours of sleep between the two of them. 

* * *

The first thing he learns about his daughter is that she hates him. At least that's one other thing she and her mother have in common. Besides the uncanny button nose and how they look exactly the same when they're scowling. It didn't even look like his kid, honestly. It genuinely seemed as if Daenerys had made a carbon copy of herself on her own. The only reason he could identify with himself in her is...well, he doesn't, minus the very clear way she scowled-that was all him. It makes him feel incredibly guilty when she's upset, because she's got the same accusing glare and the trembling lip on her four-year-old mouth as her mother, staring him down from across the room like that one time he had come home after being gone for nearly the entire night without telling Daenerys. 

When he finally goes over to her house to pick up the surmounted notes on what Rhaella needed, he reads all the journals she wrote to both him and their daughter and he refuses to admit that it's tears falling on the pages. Ygritte now has a permanent scowl on her face. Rhaella won't stop asking for her mother. There's something that cracks inside of him whenever she's tugging at her mother's limp hands, and something shatters even more when he sees Daenerys lying on the hospital bed like that, growing frailer with each visit. The doctors keep giving him weird looks and it's only six months later do they push a pile of papers for him to read about letting go of their loved ones. 

* * *

The next time he gets a call at two in the morning isn't because of Rhaella's crying this time. It's the hospital telling him that she's finally awake. Ygritte has something akin to relief in her eyes as they drive there, Rhaella nearly bouncing in her car seat when they tell her that mommy is back. Her excitement is so like Daenerys, and again Jon feels the beginning of a smile at the look of his daughter so happy. He couldn't do the same to Daenerys, but by the gods, he would try with Rhaella. 

"Jon."

Her voice is soft and scratchy, but he hears it anyway. Ygritte gives him a small squeeze on the shoulder and goes to wait in the lobby. He lingers by the head of the bed. 

"Yes?" 

Her eyes are large and haunting when she looks at him, and Jon feels guilt all over again. Does he love her, still? Daenerys, for once, is at a loss of words. They wait in silence as she tries to formulate the proper speech, her brain no doubt sluggish from the coma she had been in for the past months. 

"Thank you for taking care of her." Is what she whispers, her eyes trained fondly on the tiny girl sleeping against her chest, long eyelashes fluttering and tiny fist grasping the neck of her hospital gown. He tries not to dwell on the image of mother and daughter for too long, despite dreaming of the scene for the better half of their five years together. "She fell asleep talking about you." Daenerys sits up carefully, shifting the child into her arms. "Best you get her when she's still asleep." 

Jon takes their kid and waits for her to stop moving around before says what has been on his mind for six months. "Why didn't you tell me?" 

Her face falls, and it's like the clouds have obscured the sun. "You were in pain every time you looked at me, Jon. Why would I bring Rhaella into this mess? I saw you with Ygritte, and I knew that joint custody was never going to work. We both know women like her, and she would not have taken kindly to this." Daenerys sniffs and pulls the blankets tighter around her shoulders. "And who's to say she was yours?" The bitter laugh makes his temper begin to boil, but it's only tampered down by the fact that his daughter is sleeping against his shoulder. "You've accused me of hanging around Daario before. Or was it Drogo? I can never remember."

He's about to say something again, but she stops him. "I almost died giving birth to her, you know? Nearly gone as she was crying for life." A warm hand reaches out to stroke Rhaella's soft silver hair. The same hair she had only recently allowed him to brush in the mornings. "She's too young for that kind of loss."

Jon feels his mind flash to the frantic calls from Missandei. He could have lost both of them that day without ever knowing how Rhaella liked her shoes to be tied, how she hated the taste of kiwi, how carefree she looked when he would tell her stories of her mother. It's not his to keep, though. It was never his. 

"Ygritte doesn't want to see her again."

"Do you?" 

What he asked her so many years ago sitting outside the court building, tears in their eyes, haunts him. Rhaella is still sleeping in his arms as he steps inside the car. 

Two months or so later, Rhaella is lifted from his care and tucked securely in a car seat, sparing him only a lingering glance as the car rolls away. Ygritte doesn't ask why he cries himself to sleep that night, and for that he is thankful. He never deserved her anyway. 

* * *

Daenerys Targaryen dies when Rhaella is just shy of sev enteen years old. It's not a birth or a car crash, though. It's murder. Somehow Viserys had decided that his darling sister had more money than she was giving him, and the knife was still embedded in her stomach when Rhaella calls him, again, in the middle of the night, voice thick with tears as she bawls her heart out. Jon gets there faster than he cares, the broken voice enough to make his heart stop as he speeds past one red light after another, the only thought on his mind being that his  _ daughter  _ is in  _ danger _ . He doesn't ask how she has his number or why she launches herself into his arms the moment he arrives at the house, the red and blue flashes of the police sirens illuminating the dark streets. The blood on her clothes and the body carried out of the house hold none of his concern, though the limp hand hanging off the stretcher has the exact same wedding ring he had seen Daenerys drop to the fireplace with trembling fingers so many years ago, and he turns to retch onto the sidewalk. 

"She was still begging for him to stop, you know." Rhaella's falling asleep on his shoulder. "Mum was trying to get Uncle Viserys away from me when he came in."

He can't imagine what it's like watching a parent die. 

"She was screaming for you, did you know that?" Her voice is as sharp as her mother's wit. "Even after sixteen fucking years, she still asked for you, father." The title is said with such contempt and pain that Jon tightens his grip on the steering wheel. He doesn't allow his eyes to stray from the road they drive down. She's right, he thinks sadly, he never deserved to be in their lives. Till death do us part. He won't cry, not now. 

Daenerys Targaryen never begged for anything. And yet, her very last words were a plea to him. To do what? To save her? Fucking good that did. 

Legally, now, Rhaella is in his custody until she turns eighteen. Jon tries not to think about how Daenerys had outlined it to be the next of kin, and not because he was her father. Ygritte still harbours some sense of decency, taking kinder to the girl that she had nearly fifteen years ago. They don't stay in the same room alone for long, though. Jon pretends to ignore the fact that Rhaella is by blood both his daughter and his cousin. It makes his head spin sometimes. He wonders if Daenerys ever bothered to tell her. 

* * *

"Why did Viserys think all of a sudden that she was withholding money?" Jon forces himself to ask one morning over breakfast, with Ygritte out for their errands and leaving him and his daughter alone in the kitchen table both eating from the sickening sugary cereal she had insisted on buying from the store. Rhaella frowns and looks down at her bowl, pushing the grains around with a spoon absentmindedly. She looks so much like Daenerys in that moment that Jon feels another stab of his heart when she tosses a fine braid over her shoulder. 

"I don't know." Is her quiet answer. "Something about a letter that contained money. How he found us is anyone's guess. We had just got back from shopping for prom."

_ Prom. _

"Did your mother show you her pictures from prom?" He asks, knowing full well Daenerys would have already, only the ones of her alone on the dance floor and never the ones of his arms around her waist or his lips on her cheek. He had kept those for himself in the box in the attic. Rhaella nods. 

"She looked so happy, then. After the crash, she got more serious."

"Serious?" Jon attempts a laugh, but it dies in his throat at the sight of Rhaella stirring her cereal with a spoon, tears forming in her eyes. 

"I heard you guys that day." She finally says with difficulty, voice thick with emotion that she refuses to bear to him. "At the hospital when she just woke up. When I was four."

Jon blanches at the words, because he remembers the day more clearly than he would like to admit. He knows what she heard. 

"You didn't want me." Rhaella whispers, "Ygritte doesn't want me, you didn't want me, and my mother is a liar." She lets the sob rip from her throat freely, and shakes her head furiously. " _ Was."  _

Jon stays silent, because he knows that if he opens his mouth the only thing coming out is a scream. He's visibly shaking, and his insides feel like they're clawing at his skin. He feels sick and he feels his heart crack bit by bit with each second that passes in silence. Rhaella still doesn't look up, but oh he would do anything just to see those familiar purple eyes happy again. Like her mother's never were. 

"Your mother didn't lie." He finally grits out through his clenched jaw, hands gripping the edge of the table so hard he felt splinters at his fingertips, imagined or not. 

"Then why did she say you loved me?!" Rhaella jumped up in anger and throws the spoon at him. He doesn't flinch. "Why did she say you wanted me? That you cared?" She storms from the kitchen without another word, and Jon can only sit there like the idiot he is, hearing the guest bedroom door slam and his mind crashing with it. He really, really, really hates himself right now. He needs Daenerys. He needs his daughter. He needs- 

* * *

She comes to him in his dreams, the night before her funeral that he had let Missandei arrange, and for once they're both eighteen again, young and foolishly in love. Long before he had begun pushing her away. Before his insecurities had gotten the best of him. Her hair is no longer in those braids that he had loved, but instead flowing freely around her as she walks towards him, a sad smile on her lips and her eyes wise beyond her years. 

"Hello, Jon." Her pale hand touches his cheek, and he closes his eyes to relish in the feeling of her touch against his skin. 

"Dany." He murmurs, arms reaching out to grasp her waist, but he only grasps at air. When he opens his eyes, she is further away, a serene smile gracing her lips. She's wearing her wedding dress of all things, the day she had never seemed so beautiful to him. 

"I'm sorry, love. I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have l-" 

"But you did." Her voice is suddenly as sharp as their daughter's eyes, "And there is nothing we can do to change it." She sits down on the endless sea of grass around them, sun shining a halo onto her head. "You stopped loving me, and I broke. But Rhaella put me back together again, taught me how to live for another." She grasps his hand and pulls him down next to her. "Love her for me, Jon. Your daughter may hate you now, but she will understand." 

"How did he find you?" He whispers, fingers reaching up to twist a perfect strand of hair around his arm, relishing in the softness of her curls as he struggled to keep his emotions at bay. "Rhaella said it was a letter." 

"It was," Daenerys responds simply. She leans her head on his shoulder, the warmth radiating from the proximity of her body far too comforting as Jon felt her face turn into his neck, lips pressed behind his ear. He feels himself relax. "You kept paying child support, remember? You would always remember to send it to the Post Box. But the last one, you sent it to our address." She laughed sadly and he opened his eyes in horror. "Viserys must have looked through the mail, saw the money and the statements, perhaps." 

Oh Gods. 

Jon panics suddenly, standing abruptly on his shaky legs and stumbling away from the angel he called wife, spit aunt, heaving gasps wracking his body as the sob is ripped from his throat. He is aware that someone is screaming, a soft hand on his back, whispering in his ear, but when Jon opens his eyes, it's Ygritte he senses wrapping a body around him protectively, and it's Rhaella he sees standing at the doorway of their bedroom, eyes haunted and panicked. He weeps. 

Only once, once, had he never been the one to send the letter. Why had it not been him? He could remember why. He had forgotten to restock on postage stamps, like a fool he was, and he had asked Ygritte to mail it with her stored stamps at the office. She had argued, feeling uncomfortable for doing so, but he had insisted. Because he was lazy, because he was tired, because he hadn't been thinking. The dull ache in his heat explodes, and Jon sees the brilliant softness of his first wife tear away into the cold bed of his own. He sobs and Ygritte can only hold him until his eyes close once more. Jon will never forgive himself. 

* * *

She is cremated, as custom of her ancient blood, so Jon never gets to see her at all. Maybe it was for the best, he thinks as Rhaella clutches the silver ring in her trembling fingers. It was her mother's. His grandmother's. He doesn't dwell very long on the technicality. The only thing left of Daenerys's family. The foreboding urn is placed in a well-fashioned slab of marble in the ageing graveyard exclusively for the Grand House of Targaryen that had once reigned Westeros, when it was still in its medieval ages. A small vial is given to both of them, but Jon doesn't feel the lump of glass in his pocket. He refuses to react to the cold wedding band next to it either. 

The very first time he had the resounding thought of  _ Gods she really is my daughter  _ is when Rhaella, just like when he was eighteen, is suddenly discovered to have Arrhythmia. It was something he had gotten from Lyanna, and though it was nearly gone now, Rhaella was soon within the hospital with in cardiac arrest. Jon is really starting to hate hospitals. 

As the doctor drones on with the same speech  _ he  _ had heard as a young boy, Ygritte pulls her hand away from his, wincing when his grip became too harsh to bear. He apologises with a small nudge of his shoulder. 

"Is she going to be alright then?" Her voice holds a hint of concern, and Jon is grateful that his wife is here. 

"Well, there are certainly treatments available, but considering her weakness stemming from being born premature, the chances of complete recovery, like you, sir" the doctor gives him a look of pity, "are not particularly high."

"She was born prematurely?" Ygritte's gasp is enough to make Jon start moving again, and he places a hand on Ygritte's arm. Not now. 

"Eight months, it says here. Severe delicacy of the heart, I'm afraid." The doctor plucks a few pamphlets from a folder and hands them to him. He stares at the smiling faces of the advertisement for treatment dumbly. They aren't going to help, he already knows that. Ygritte doesn't though, and takes them with interest. He had been lucky, it had been relieved with treatment. He does not know if his daughter possesses the same strength as he. But he can try. And he will. The Targaryen fortune is hers by right in a few more months, and he has his own funds, because he remembers the haunted whispers Daenerys had told him  _ before  _ everything went to shit, before he had brought the news from Sam back home, before he had known what it was he has asked his friend to do. 

_ I am the last Dragon,  _ she had said,  _ I am alone.  _ Rhaella would never know abandonment. 

He could provide that much, at least.

**Author's Note:**

> Pulled from an old flashfic I did ages ago when I was really favouring the jarring style that packed a punch. It is a little convoluted and confusing so if you've got any questions about the numerous plot holes I can try my best to answer them. I am not planning to continue this, but I might if I get more ideas on how I can do that, feel free to tell me in the comments! What would you like to see?


End file.
